Eternal
by inkbender
Summary: "Promise you'll remember me, and we'll see each other again." Lightning revives from crystal stasis in A Dying World with her final promise to Serah in mind and the determination to fulfill it. Post-game happy ending to Lightning's story. Now at interfics. proboards. com under Games, Final Fantasy XIII.
1. Hope

_A/N: This story is concerned with narrating a possible happy ending for Lightning (because the end of FFXIII-2 was anything but.) DO NOT READ if you have not finished FFXIII-2. MAJOR SPOILERS. _

_Updates every two weeks._

* * *

**500 AF - Valhalla**

[Lightning]: _These thoughts that live within my heart—they will endure the passing of eons. If they can one day be the light that guides Serah's soul back to me… If we can laugh together just one more time… Well, then I have nothing left to wish for._

* * *

**0 AF – Cocoon after Orphan's Defeat**

Orphan has been defeated. They have completed their Focus and doomed Cocoon. Their teammates float above them, no longer weighed down by Eden's artificial gravity. Now that all Cocoon fal'Cie have fallen, the world cannot support itself.

It is falling apart while simultaneously plummeting to Gran Pulse.

"Fang! Vanille!" Snow shouts, a hand outstretched.

Fear momentarily bubbles in Vanille's stomach, but Fang squeezes her hand gently. "Vanille?" she says softly, and Vanille can feel the eyes of her closest friend resting on her. With that gaze comes the powerful strength that Fang wields, the solid foundation that she has always been. Renewed purpose surges back into Vanille's heart; she collects herself and looks straight back at her honorary sister.

_Wishes can come true, but not if you just wait for miracles. _

"I'm ready," she nods, grasping Fang's other hand. Together, they circle slowly in midair as Cocoon falls apart around them. Hope cries out above her, but she shuts him out. After all, in the end, it was not her wish to save Cocoon.

She wished to save the lives of her friends. Lightning. Sazh. Snow. Hope. Serah.

_Miracles are things we make for ourselves… here and now._

Warmth floods through her system. She and Fang are one being—Ragnarok—working in tandem to create the same miracle. Save Cocoon. Save our friends. Monsters disintegrate before them. Cocoon is falling into chaos; Ragnarok must dodge chunks of the land that tear free from the descending planet, spiraling towards the gigantic world beneath. The sheer air friction has melted much of Cocoon's crust, transforming its bottom into a vault of magma; without hesitation, Ragnarok leaps straight in and begins to channel the molten rock.

Glowing lava explodes towards Gran Pulse. Cocoon is so close to colliding with the world surface, so close to exploding against the unyielding land. So close to snuffing out the lives of billions of people. So close to tempting Etro far from the gate of death, so close to allowing Chaos to spill into Reality.

Hope. Lightning. Serah.

Ragnarok explodes from Cocoon's surface, willing magma to reach as far as possible. With that final act, they succumb to the crystallization that has been pushing into their consciousness since their completed their Focus. Glassy rock slides its way through their bodies, spreading continuously throughout the hot magma around them. Jagged crystals explode around Cocoon's outer surface; glossy waves freeze in crests and ribbons about the destroyed planet. The pillar itself instantly freezes in ice blue, supporting the small world. The energy blast ricochets around the entirety of Cocoon before rebounding back to its nexus, right where the pillar connects to Cocoon.

And in that nexus hovers Vanille and Fang—separate crystal epitaphs once again. Indestructible, lasting to the end of time, bearing the memories of the past and future: their Focus fulfilled, a hope realized through the salvation of their friends. An impossible miracle made.

Hope. Lightning. Serah.

Vanille smiles, and her consciousness drifts into eternity.

* * *

**500 AF – The Void Beyond, Throne of the Goddess**

Serah's body dissolves into glimmering sparkles as her spirit passes on.

Lightning Farron is left on one knee, her eyes dry, bowing before the vacated throne of the Etro. Yet she does not intend to pay respects to the dead goddess; she does not even consider the probability of the world falling to Chaos. She does not wonder about the fate of Noel Kreiss or Hope Esthiem, left behind on a deteriorating Gran Pulse. She does not speculate what the pilot Sazh Katzroy might be doing, nor how the stranded Snow Villiers might react to the death of his fiancée.

_Just keep me in your thoughts_, Serah's voice echoes in her head_. Remember me, and we'll see each other again._

Serah is gone. Her baby sister is gone, lost to the sands of time. Even as a young woman, Lightning has at most sixty years left in her life. Sixty years in which she will never embrace Serah's small body again, will never look into those gentle grey eyes and tell her that everything is going to be alright.

Her sister has been lost to this world, and the only thing left behind is the memory of her final words.

_No matter what happens to me… even if I vanish from this world—promise me, Lightning. Promise you'll remember me._

Not a word about her fiancée, Snow. Not a question about Noel, nor an inquiry concerning Snow or Sazh. The last and only thing Serah has requested was that Lightning preserve her memory.

Lightning glances upward again at Etro's empty throne, the jaded crystal shimmering and iridescent in the dim light. The goddess who'd bequeathed Lightning with the power to fight for Time had spread herself too thin. She gave mankind his Spirit; she gave both Caius and Lightning a piece of her soul; she split herself multiple times to pour energy into reviving the heroes of Cocoon from crystal stasis. The effort weakened the goddess; Chaos surged past her and into the world, and not even the time travels of Serah and Noel could fix what was irreparably broken.

The only object that could not be broken in the first place, even amongst the violent flood of Chaos, is crystal.

_I'll never forget,_ Lightning vows as she makes up her mind._ I promised you that._

The throne of Etro flashes. Instantly, jaded stone steps appear, ascending towards the unoccupied seat. Without a further thought, Lightning rises to her feet and begins to climb the stairs.

_Even if I stand to lose everything, I'll preserve your memory for the tomorrows yet to be._

_Come what may… I could breathe my last breath and the world be crumbling into oblivion._

With the death of Etro, Chaos is no longer separated from Reality. It will flood into Academia. It will consume everything in its path as it gradually traverses Gran Pulse and Cocoon. Valhalla will meld with Reality; the two will become one. Time will end. The world will no longer age, will no longer change. It will simply fall apart.

The entire world will become one collective Cie'th.

No soul, no spirit. Only an empty, unchanging shell, unaffected by time. There will be no death, but no real life either. Life will become meaningless: relationships, goals, a future. They will all no longer exist.

But still, there are ways to keep a memory alive. At least until initial wave of destruction has passed.

_And I know one that works for sure. _

Lightning stops in front of Etro's throne, her gaze resting on its vacant seating. Crystal gleams, having maintained its pure original form since the beginning of Time.

_Indestructible crystal. Even in the sea of Chaos, it will never lose its shine._

Lightning settles lightly into the empty throne. Serah remembered her when everybody else believed her to be dead. Her little sister simply believed in the seemingly impossible goal that she could meet Lightning once again, and created her own miracle to reach her.

Now it's time that Lightning returns the favor. No matter how impossible it may seem, she _will_ preserve Serah's memory. She promised.

Even if it takes a miracle, she _will_ see her sister again.

_I will become an eternal epitaph._

_Your memory will survive for eternity within a crystal tomb._

_This shall be my legacy and my atonement. But most of all… my final hope._

* * *

**0 AF – Cocoon's Crystal Pillar**

[Fang]:_ When prayers turn to promises, not even fate can stand in their way._

[Vanille]: _We held the light of hope in our hearts and it changed the impossible. Now we live on to greet a new dawn._

* * *

_Author's Rant_

_Drawing parallels between the endings of FFXIII and FFXIII-2 (Requiem of the Goddess). Do you see them?_

_Anyways, I'm pretty irritated that FFXIII-2 turned out to be such a downer game. I thought it was supposed to be a happier ending for Lightning! Instead, we got a cliffhanger ending and blatant promotion for a possible FFXIII-3, if fans are that desperate to find out the ending. (I'm one of those desperate people.) _

_I don't know how popular demand will be for FFXIII-3, or if it will even come out at all (though not wrapping up FFXIII-2 is just begging for another sequel.) So here's a take on what might happen in the future—a future that gives Lightning her happy ending._

_Possibly 5-10 chapters long? I don't do so well with short stories. No romantic pairings planned. _


	2. Spirit

**500 AF - Cocoon's Crystal Pillar & The Void Beyond (Serah's Mind)**

She is as still as death itself. After all, what is everlasting life confined within crystal, if not an endless conclusion to one's existence?

And this is her second shot at frozen eternity, so it's going to take much longer than 500 years for Vanille to wake up again.

Yet it doesn't seem as if much time has passed before her Spirit is awakened to a distant memory. A familiar voice calling for help, similarly trapped within an indestructible tomb—but not of her own doing. Vanille and Fang accepted their crystal tombs without resistance; this young girl had not consented to being trapped within her own mind, and her Spirit calls for help.

Vanille responds. Despite her fate to drift through the next several millennia as a Spirit encased with perfect crystal, the sheer familiarity and its desperate tone reaches out to her, rousing her from eternal slumber; close by, she senses Fang stir. She rises slowly, tendrils of thought warming up and stretching until they hit the shimmering glassy barriers that protect them from Chaos.

It is here that Vanille encounters a foreign barrier. One that is not of her own crystal. From here, she is finally able to identify that familiar voice: Serah.

_Snow left his home and his friends, traveling through time to save others. Hope worked feverishly to save Cocoon. And then there was Vanille and Fang, trapped in crystal, holding Cocoon in the sky. I couldn't desert them to live in this world of dreams. I couldn't betray them._

Serah is trapped within her own mind by an illusion created by the Void Beyond. She is still very much alive, seeking to break free of the dream world constructed around her—including a faint imitation of her sister, Lightning.

Serah struggles briefly before taking a small step back. "Lightning, I'm so sorry," she says, withdrawing her hand.

The imitation bursts into dark flames and dissipates into the shifting dimensions of the dream world. Serah drops to her knees and screams, sudden anguish flooding through her mind as she relives losing her sister all over again.

With that heartrending cry from a close friend, Vanille's Spirit wakes up just enough to thrust a tendril of her Spirit through the barrier encaging Serah's mind. She reaches further, her calls echoing around a lifeless sandy beach. Such a fake dream world constructed by the Void Beyond.

_Don't give up_, Vanille whispers softly. _Don't give up, Serah. _Her voice resonates around the cliff edges, focusing in on Serah. The girl picks herself up slowly, clear confusion on her face. She begins to follow Vanille's voice.

_That voice,_ Serah murmurs. _I'm sure I've heard it before._

_Keep going, _Vanille encourages. _You can do it._

Serah continues to run, and as she nears Vanille's drifting Spirit, Vanille senses her own body solidifying within this dream world. Despite its illegitimacy, the act of manifesting as a simple illusion is enough to further revive her from unending slumber.

Serah's voice rebounds back to her. _I don't see anyone. But I'm not alone._

_Not far now,_ Vanille calls, her strength returning. On the other side of the barrier caging Serah within her mind, Fang also awakens.

"Vanille!" Serah cries, running towards her. "Vanille, is that really you?"

Warmth floods Vanille as she greets the girl she knew long, long ago. "Well, that's a good question," she smiles while turning to the dream world's version of Cocoon, still suspended above Gran Pulse by a stunning crystal pillar. "Hm, put it this way: it's the real me, but inside a dream. I'm still sleeping in the crystal pillar, you see." She turns back to Serah playfully. "And you're dreaming away, too. So it's like, we're meeting inside each other's heads."

Serah looks down at the ground. "So this is a dream after all. …But why did you come?"

Fang's voice echoes around Serah's dream world, and in a flash of light, the taller Pulsian warrior drops out of the sky. "Because you needed help. We've come to pull you out of this fantasy of yours."

Vanille steps up next to her (practically) sister. "You're trapped in a dream that never ends, somewhere in the Void Beyond. If we don't help, you'll never wake up."

"And that, my girl, is why we're here." Fang swings her spear, piercing the atmosphere of the dream world itself. Its delicate fabric tears and a portal to the Reality appears right before them.

"Good one, Fang!" Vanille cheers. She's glad Fang knew what to do… because, beyond telling Serah the truth, Vanille hadn't really thought about how to release her friend from the dream nightmare.

Serah seems to understand how much of an effort it was for Fang and Vanille to simply _be_ here, because her eyes become oddly bright as she exclaims, "Thank you!"

"You're the one who made the decision to wake up and leave this world," Fang replies. "We're just showing you a way out."

Vanille steps forward, grasping one of Serah's hands. "If you hadn't rejected the fake Lightning, I would have never have been able to reach you," she tells the younger girl softly. "You'd still be stuck in your dream if you hadn't reached out to others and cried for help."

Serah's hand tightens around Vanille's. "I almost believed her," she spills guiltily. "I almost believed the fake Lightning. But then, I remembered my sister is fighting in Valhalla. Snow and Hope, they're fighting their own battles as well. Out of all of us, I was the only one who was running away from the truth."

_Run away,_ Vanille thinks bitterly. Memories from her past life resurface. It feels like such a long time ago. As a l'Cie blessed with eternal life, is it natural that she can recall memories from her previous existence?

"That's all right," Fang comforts gruffly, "Because now it's your turn to help someone. You're not the only one who's trapped in a dream they can't wake up from."

Vanille's not too sure what Fang is talking about; Vanille's Spirit had been awakened only by Serah's cry for help. Because of their close spiritual bond due to their brief fusion as Ragnarok, it was only natural that Fang's Spirit be brought back to life as well. Perhaps Fang felt the spiritual presence of another Spirit struggling against the confines of the Void Beyond.

Serah's eyes brighten. "You mean Noel!"

"You need to go and find him," Vanille encourages. "I reckon you can save him, Serah." At this point, Vanille feels her grip of Serah's dream world slipping.

Serah's eyes widen to the size of dinner plates. "Fang? Vanille?"

Fang glances at her glittering skin with slight disinterest. "Damn. Guess our time's up."

Vanille inspects her forearm; it appears as if flakes of her flesh are peeling away, revealing golden light beneath. "We have to go back to sleep now," she says, almost sadly. Despite the allure of ceaseless sleep, Vanille has never felt more alive. And this is Serah's dream world, so technically she's still sleeping. But that hunger for mortal life has returned, and Vanille knows she won't be sleeping within her crystal confinement as easily now.

"See you later," Vanille whispers as her Spirit evaporates away, spiraling out of Serah's mind and back into her own crystal case.

"See you later," Serah repeats, staring into the sky of her dream world long after Vanille and Fang have faded away.

And as Vanille sinks into timeless sleep, she thinks not of the fulfillment of her Focus but of memories of past friends: Hope, Snow, Lightning…

…Serah.

* * *

**The End of Time - Valhalla**

_The gods' tales are woven in crystal. The tale of Bhunivelze, the slumbering god bearing witness to an eternal dream. The tale of Etro, the goddess drowning in a sea of chaos._

Years flash past like distant memories. Darkness, flame, drought. Destruction. Time does not simply cease to exist; it unwinds slowly, edges fraying and spilling out its contents piece by piece. Past and future clash, temporal rifts spawn and grow until they tear Reality apart. The world fades as the fabric that kept it together unravels.

The very concept of Time weakens, yet time itself continues to pass.

Within her crystal tomb, Lightning experiences it all. It is a blur of beautiful color behind a perfect wall of translucent stone, its bright violence and horror dimmed and dulled by a solid barrier. Darkness overtakes the world, tearing it apart. Mountains rise and fall; oceans swirl and flood; architecture of a past culture modifies itself into the dark buildings of a lifeless Valhalla. Reality and Valhalla merge, and what little land that is untouched by destruction decays.

Yet throughout all this, several lights shine. Protected within a crystal shell, Lightning is unaffected by the death of her world. She continues to live, preserved for eternity—her strength, her struggles, her consciousness. Her promises.

_Etro bestowed upon humans a gift. Though unseen, that gift—it lies within us all. It is a constant turmoil of light and darkness, strength and frailty, beauty and unsightliness._

_That gift is our Spirit._

_It gives us the strength we need to persevere in hardships. But at times, it is nothing but a curse, straying beyond our control… causing us pain and sorrow. Even so, it is something far too precious to lose. _

Within everlasting crystal, a Spirit _is_. All her experiences—her pain, her laughter, her fury and faithfulness and promises—forever sustained. While the life of the world slowly drains away, overcome by feral monsters, by isolation and the death of mankind's Spirit, by blood red skies and a pale, infertile land, Lightning is one of the very few Spirits left.

_It is what allows me to hold hope for the future. In a world consumed by chaos, in a world where Spirits are fading, I ask myself: have I the strength to embrace my gift?_

For Serah. She promised Serah that she would remember. Remember and meet her again.

_For now, I sleep, my dreams everlasting. It is here that I await the end of eternity…_

…_and the day I awaken once again._


	3. Ash

**The End of Time –Subterranean Fissure – A Dying World**

Dust to dust. Ashes to ashes.

It's the first thing Fang becomes aware of as she rises slowly out of centuries of eternal sleep.

That, and her body is covered with it from lying face-first in it.

She slowly picks herself up, not quite sure of where she is. It's almost like the last time she awoke from crystal stasis: crumpled on the floor of a fal'Cie temple with all her memories wiped clean. Except the ground she lies on now is soft, a bed of ashes. Fang looks around at bleak gray cliffs; she's in a subterranean fissure, with just a slit of stormy gray skies above her.

Dead. That's the feeling she gets from just lying here.

As she pulls herself to her knees, a memory alights in her mind—this lifeless fissure resembles the flower-filled fissure of her most recent past life, a place where she deceived Vanille into summoning her Eidolon, Hecatoncheir.

Memories flicker through Fang's mind. The memories of her past life feel like a receding dream—dooming Cocoon by ending Orphan, yet saving the small world by crystallizing a pillar of lava to support it. Sleeping in that pillar for hundreds of years, her Spirit brushing against Vanille's gently every few moments.

Her heart stops as she realizes one important thing: _Where's Vanille?_

Fang leaps to her feet, all senses immediately on the alert. Vanille is not here. Her vulnerable younger sister is nowhere to be found. Fang can't even sense her.

_Vanille is not here._

The shadow of a flying wyvern passes across her, its talons clutched around a small human figure. Fang acts completely on instinct, snatching the spear on her back and surging into the air with a powerful leap. The ashen groun absorbs a bit of her power and she doesn't go as high as she'd like, so she rebounds off a cliff wall. The stone is far more fragile than she imagined, crumbling to dust beneath her hands and feet, but she manages to scramble to the top anyways.

"Vanille!" she screams, her eyes trained on the limp figure in the wyvern's claws. The girl's yellow footwear contrasts sharply with the gray surroundings: degenerating rocky mountains and pallid slopes. The Gran Pulse of Fang's memory had been vivacious, burst with vivid greens and rich blues and deep hues of red and pink. Even the brown was warm—but in this foreign world, everything is a shade of lifeless black.

Fang propels herself into the air again with powerful leg muscles. The mountain cracks underneath her pressure, but no matter; forceful leaps and bounds take her closer and closer to the predatory wyvern and its fragile, unconscious prey.

With a final roaring leap, Fang flies right over the wyvern and drives her spear sideways, puncturing the flying monster's liver. The force of the painful blow causes the monster to roll over and crash land on its back, thus protecting the precious cargo in its claws.

It is now that Fang realizes the girl is not Vanille.

She wears a white top with a ringed opening in the center and a small, pulsing gray crystal right above her heart. Her long, pale legs are clad within a pale purple skirt, and her yellow footwear resembles rough moccasins rather than Vanille's proper boots. She wears her bundled steel-colored hair within a headdress with a semi-transparent veil that partially hides her face, yet Fang instantly recognizes who this girl is.

A being from her first life. Not the life she lived on Cocoon, bound to enemies of Pulse by the same fal'Cie brand, but the life before that, when she'd grown up in an Oerbian orphanage and protected a smaller girl from simple things that frightened her. In that orphanage, they were taught about the Farseer capital of Paddra, the city with a future-seeing priestess. A young girl reincarnated throughout the ages, who predicted the end of their civilization—and so it happened, as the entire planet of Pulse erupted into civil war and the rest of the population transformed into Cie'th during the War of Transgression.

The ancient yet forever young seeress, Yeul.

Paddra Nsu-Yeul.

Though it is not Vanille, Fang still wrestles the dazed body from the clutches of the wyvern. The monster beneath her writhes and tries to break free, but Fang tames it with a couple sharp jabs with her spear in sensitive places and it quiets down. The seeress is as lightweight as Vanille, and Fang recalls fond memories of traipsing around the Archylte Steppe, hunting and fishing and slaying monsters and slinging the smaller girl over her shoulder and running like hell from fights they couldn't win.

Those were the days.

The girl mumbles a little, the dazed status wearing off slowly. Fang lays her gently on the ground, unsure of what to do now. Though she may be tough as nails, Fang still possesses a lingering motherly protection that now extends over the girl she just saved. That, and the girl is the last member of a tribe that died out during the war between Cocoon and Gran Pulse.

"Where is your guardian?" Fang says gruffly the second the girl's eyelashes flutter. The seeress was always accompanied by a l'Cie whose only purpose was to protect the seeress from danger; a wyvern bearing the seeress to certain death is definitely danger.

Carefully, Fang brings a bottle of potion up to the seeress' lips, and the girl drinks gratefully. After a couple gulps, Yeul mutters, "I have no guardian."

Fang raises an eyebrow. "You're the priestess of Paddra, right? The seeress of the Farseers. You have to have a guardian."

"I do not see the future," the girl murmurs, sitting up. "There is no future. I therefore no longer serve a purpose and need not be protected."

"You've got to be kidding," Fang mumbles. Yeul is the complete opposite of Vanille—quiet and very calm even in the face of danger, like a smooth river compared to Vanille's bubbly personality. And though Vanille's exuberance irked Fang once upon a time, she's certainly adapted to taking the excessive displays of energy in stride. Hope's weakness she simply ignored, letting him handle rough situations to tough him up—and it worked, so much that his Eidolon Alexander resembled a mechanical fortress.

This child, on the other hand, seems more mature than most adults. Most people do not value their lives so lowly; to say that because she has no purpose, she does not have the right to protection is not something that anybody would say. It's slightly unnerving, especially since the serene and composed voice comes from such a small and fragile body, a body easily snapped and broken.

"How long has it been since the Fall of Cocoon?" Fang asks in an attempt to orient herself.

Yeul levels her with the same calm look. "There is no future and the past has already gone. Time has not passed since Chaos overtook the world."

Fang's mind stops—then jerks back to life as the wyvern shudders underneath her. The winged monster drives its circulation system by the motions of flight; keeping it motionless on the ground for so long will eventually asphyxiate it. "We'll talk in the air," she barks, rolling the flying beast onto its stomach and mounting it at the base of its neck. "Hop on; you can hold onto me," she says gruffly, patting the patch of rough skin behind her.

As the delicate girl gently slips behind Fang and wraps her thin arms around Fang's torso, Fang's reminded of a past life, long ago, when she had first taught Vanille to snag a wyvern with her binding rod so that she could quickly subdue it. Once they had grounded the monster and asserted their dominance, Vanille had promptly freaked out and refused to ride the winged creature. Only the solid foundation that Fang represented to the younger girl finally convinced her to use the wyvern as a faster way home.

And now, Yeul holds onto her. The seeress' grip is not the same panicked clamp that was Vanille's initial reaction to being so high up in the air; as the wyvern beats its wings weakly, transporting them up through the mountainous fissure and over a seemingly endless range of bleak gray peaks, Yeul's grip is one of trust, of absolute reassurance that Fang will protect her.

As they fly towards nowhere, searching for the gentle touch of Vanille's Spirit, Fang realizes that she is aware of the seeress as well.

And that she feels no Spirit within Yeul.


	4. Lineage

_One by one, the Guardians meet their charges…_

* * *

**The End of Time – The Black Sands – A Dying World**

The blur of color flashing in a weary dreamscape before her eyes seems to halt suddenly. The muted hues behind her glassy cage swirl slowly, like currents of white sand along a river stream.

It's as if an icy barrier has simply evaporated away, leaving Lightning's soft body with no support. Clammy air sticks to her skin before clothing manifests, wrapping her skin tightly in layers of solid armor and supple white feathers. Soft particles of dissolved crystal flicker around her suddenly flexible body as she slumps to her knees, almost unable to support her own weight after such a long disuse.

The bombardment of harsh senses momentarily paralyzes her as each sense is instantly restored after centuries of absence. She can smell the bitterness of dirt and sand seconds before her long-unused eyes adjust to the stark light of her current environment.

This is not the world she left. Lightning remembers the pinkish hue amongst blue skies of the Void Beyond; the ancient sandy stones constructing the architecture of the dimension, speckled with darker dirt and caked with white salt. The empty throne of Etro hovered in the background, its jaded green crystals carved into an elaborate seat unoccupied by the goddess. Every detail, every shade of color illuminated by the sky, hidden with shadow, its texture, its scent, its taste—Lightning remembers it all.

The world has long since decayed. Now, all she can see is a desolate landscape of white ash, only interrupted by rocky grey cliffs and ebony trees, their skeletal branches devoid of leaves. That is the world that Lightning Farron steps into.

The only sound that reaches her ears is the howl of wind… and the predatory growl of what is unmistakably a Behemoth, followed by a small, very human whimper.

Adrenaline quickens Lightning's restoration, accompanied by a memory of a much younger Serah, frightened by a violent thunderstorm within Cocoon's Bodhum. Memories from a past life; memories from an eternity ago, when time still governed the world.

Sight sharpens and hearing is magnified as she propels herself to her feet, her gunblade instantly held at the ready. Her eternal slumber has done nothing to drain her energy. Truly, she has been preserved in the same form that she entered crystal stasis: at the height of strength, imbued with a piece of the Spirit of the goddess Etro. Her feet pump through the fine white sand, sinking slightly before springing upwards again. The landscape repeats itself over and over again as Lightning tears through, kicking up microscopic particles in a terrain long undisturbed by life.

The growl sounds again, louder and much more aggressive this time. The Behemoth is about to pounce.

Lightning puts on an inhuman burst of speed and tops an ashy dune, instantly spotting the monster. Gigantic and grotesque, it is much larger than any Behemoth Lightning has ever seen. But this is the end of time, and this particular creature is probably the last of its kind, having clawed its way through existence by devouring every last living thing.

The last living thing being the small girl standing in front of it, her thin arms spread wide, her face uplifted and ready to accept her fate.

One glance and Lightning instantly knows that the girl is not her sister Serah.

But she has already put her all into saving the girl, and Lightning shunts her disappointment aside in a roaring challenge, soaring over the child and driving her gunblade through the Behemoth's eyes. The monster roars and smashes its own paw into its face; Lightning dodges the blow by swinging her body away, using the gunblade as a handle. The action dislodges her weapon and she flips away, landing safely on the ashen ground.

"Run," she barks at the thin girl behind her, switching to firearm and shooting bullets into the Behemoth's other eye.

The beast screams in rage and swipes blindly. Lightning leaps backwards, still shooting—and almost crashes into the other girl, still standing her ground. At the last minute, she twists her body and narrowly avoids the girl, losing her balance in the process and tumbling to the ground. She immediately leaps to her feet and barely dives out of the way as the Behemoth charges past, its horn denting an arm guard.

"What are you doing?" Lightning yells at the stationary girl. "Run!"

The girl fixes her with a somber look. Her grey eyes appear to glow through the transparent veil in her headdress, pulsing in time with the strange light of a gray crystal suspended in an opening in her top.

Yeul.

_Your sister… she is the same as us. _

Lightning clenches her teeth as she backflips away from another Behemoth charge. Partially blinded, the monster is entrenched within a raging vendetta with only one target: Lightning. It screeches, turning as it passes and punching a clawed fist right into Lightning's side. She grunts as she's sent flying, tumbling over and over without any sense of direction.

_And so she is with us. Always with us. _

Lightning makes her decision. She stops her tumble through the air and manages to land on her feet. The Behemoth is only a couple feet away, its heavy paws threatening to smash her into the ground. Lightning leaps high into the air at the last second and the Behemoth's head follows, its one good eye trained on her. The sudden change in direction upsets the monster's balance, though, which Lightning further exacerbates with a well-aimed Windstrike. The sudden blast of air further pushes the Behemoth off its center of gravity, and with a surprised wail, it topples over. Lightning lands a couple heavy damage-dealing attacks to its soft underbelly before leaping back and casting a raging storm of Thundara around it. Blood sizzles around its muscled body as it tries to regain its feet, but Lightning embeds her gunblade within its electrified abdomen and channels a final Thunderstrike.

With a final roar, the Behemoth succumbs to a fried death. Steam rises from its openings as static crackles down its warm flesh.

Lightning drops to one knee as a wave of dizziness overtakes her. Not fifteen minutes into her release from eternal slumber and she's already exerting so much energy. She's about to search her body for possible potions when a soft voice interrupts her thought process.

"Why?"

The young seeress remains in the same damned spot, unmoving. Perhaps she'd foreseen her death and expected to die, Lightning will have none of that.

_Until time is destroyed, she will sleep with us. _

Perhaps the suspicion that Lightning has is erroneous, but it's the only thing Lightning has for now. Serah is now tied within the lineage of seeresses, according to the illusion in the Void Beyond created by Caius before their final confrontation. This girl appears to be yet another reincarnation of the Paddra seeresses. Lightning will follow this girl…

Lightning hesitantly takes a step forward, then bows on one knee in front of the girl. "Take me to Serah," she whispers.

Silence. Then soft fingers rest upon her head. "Let's go," the seeress murmurs.

Lightning rises to her feet and follows her charge.


	5. Interfic

THIS STORY HAS NOT BEEN DISCONTINUED.

It just will no longer be continued by me. My first year of professional school has started and the work load is much more than I had initially realized. Thus I will need _your _help in finishing this story.

Have you heard of interfics before?

According to the site: "_Interactive Fanfics, or interfics, are 'choose your own ending' (or 'choose your own continuation' if you prefer) stories started by one author and continued by any number of others who wish to participate. At the end of each segment, readers are given the opportunity to either wait for the next installment or write their own contribution. The direction of the story can change depending on who writes it and other authors must react to the creativity of their fellow ficcers. Interfics are a fun way to share your ideas if you find it difficult to write an entire fic on your own, and unlike RPGs anyone can join in at any time and nobody is confined to writing from only one character's point of view."_

So help me finish the story over at **interfics. proboards. com (slash) index. cgi? board = ffxiiiinterfics**. Just head over and write the next segment; I want to co-write this story with all of you!

And in the end, I may copy, paste, edit, and upload our final product back over here (crediting all of you, of course).

I look forward to writing this interfic with you all!


	6. Ocean

_A/N: This chapter is derived from the lyrics of "Ruined Hometown", the theme that plays in Oerba in FFXIII-2._

* * *

**The End of Time – Oerba – A Dying World**

Vanille barely notices the crystal melt away from her sleepy mind. Pink cloth wraps around her torso; fur materializes around her thighs. Bracelets, armbands, beaded threads—all almost a millennia old, yet preserved with crystal for centuries.

She isn't aware of her surroundings until the magic that brought her out of crystal stasis wears off, depositing her gently on rugged metal plating. Still slightly woozy from eternal slumber, she falls to her knees, then collapses face first onto the rust-eaten bridge.

She instantly recognizes it from her past lives. The junk metal, the cracked road, the corroded steel—this is the bridge out of Oerba. The bridge that now only leads off into the dull sky.

Oerba… why is she in Oerba? After spending centuries inside the crystal pillar, why is she all the way back at her old hometown?

Vanille pushes herself onto her knees again, her strength returning almost instantly. Preservation for centuries certainly assured that she is now still at the same level of strength as when she first was laid within her crystal tomb: at her peak of strength, having just defeated Orphan and doomed Cocoon, yet saved all its lives by melding with Fang and transforming into Ragnarok.

Where's Fang?

In a small state of panic, Vanille leaps to her feet, squealing, "Fang?" She doesn't know how much time has passed, but the entire time, she felt Fang's Spirit. Her sister was there the entire time. So why not now?

She runs towards Oerba, towards the crumbling, ancient city. Every stair that she leaps down from crumbles under her weight, but when she finally reaches the deserted beach, shock briefly overcomes her panicked search for Fang.

The ocean is gone.

Instead, the ashen-sanded beach extends for almost a mile before dropping off into an empty pit full of skeletal, gray coral reefs devoid of life. The once steady pound of surf no longer resounds in Vanille's ears. She can't taste the sea salt in the air. The color has faded from this world, leaving only decaying shades of darkness behind.

This is not Oerba. This is not the home that Vanille remembers.

"_Just as the light begins to fade to dark, the moaning wind sings songs to my forebodings.  
__Am I alone with no one watching o'er? If I do fall will no one come to save me?"_

Vanille whirls around at the sound of poetry drifting off a human tongue. Standing next to a collapsed pile of rotting wood and glass—the old schoolhouse, Vanille briefly recalls—is a girl about her age wearing a strange headdress with transparent veil that covers her face. As the girl walks towards Vanille, she reaches behind her ear and flips an unseen switch that retracts the veil, revealing her calm gray eyes, and releases waist-length steel-gray hair. Within a ring in her shirt, Vanille notices, hovers a small gray crystal that seems to pulse with a heartbeat.

The girl seems very familiar, but Vanille can't place her. She puts on a cheery smile nonetheless and bounces up to the stranger. "I'm glad you're here," she says in relief. "I haven't a clue when this is! How long has it been since Cocoon fell?"

The girl looks at her with eyes that seem to stare straight into her and replies monotonously, "You have been released from crystal stasis recently, no?"

The sight of the ancient, dilapidated schoolhouse ruins behind the girl suddenly strikes a memory within Vanille—the Farseer tribe, with their reincarnated seeress forever preserved at a young age. "Yeul!" Vanille exclaims. "You're Paddra Nsu-Yeul. You… you see the future!"

"No longer," the girl murmurs, walking past Vanille and out towards the cliff of ashen-sand that used to represent the shallow ocean shore. "There is no future, just as there is no past. This is the End of Time." She turns to face Vanille, and another strange phrase tumbles from her mouth. "_Oh, cursed fate, eternally delivering your doom."_

Vanille's not sure what to say. The End of Time? What happened during her crystal stasis? She remembers freeing Serah from the confinement of her mind as brought about by the Void Beyond, but that's about it.

Vanille glances at Yeul, now sitting on the plain of sand as if observing the non-existent ocean. The sight reminds Vanille of a lifetime ago, when Serah had brought Vanille to the Bodhum beach during sunset, when the sky was afire with burnt orange and scorched red. They sat near the gentle surf and admired each other's' hair as highlighted by the sunset—Serah's warm ruby and Vanille's burnt cherry—before delving into deeper matters. It seems like an eternity since those moments, when she'd simply felt like a carefree girl without the threat of Ragnarok driving her towards certain death.

Quietly, Vanille seats herself next to the seeress. "This is the end of time?" she asks after a moment. "Is that why…"

"This is a dying world," Yeul whispers. "A spent past and no future to progress towards leaves me with nothing to see. I am no longer a seeress; I serve no purpose."

Vanille shakes her head furiously. "What are you talking about? Of course you serve a purpose! If you didn't, then you wouldn't be here."

Yeul looks at her somberly. "I am a seeress ordained to view time before it comes to be, yet Time has ceased… just like this ocean."

This last phrase reverberates within Vanille—the ocean that had once defined Oerba as Vanille envisioned it is now absent, only adding to the hunch that this is not her world anymore. "I thought… I thought Time was a river. From a source to a conclusion."

"Time is an ocean," Yeul says firmly, staring off into the dead coral reefs with their lifeless arms reaching towards nutrients that are no longer there. "It is not a line from A to B; it's a plane with a million currents, and each current bears a possibility. When you change the future, you simply switch to a different current. Change the future, change the past. The currents flow onward, and Time moves on.

"Yet the currents of this ocean were halted, and in the same way, when Time ceased to exist, the currents ceased to flow. We are stuck at one point in time, sitting on the rocky ocean floor with no way to move at all.

"And so we exist in this state of eternity… and at the same time, we do not exist at all."


End file.
